WMD

Hysterical cries to the contrary, keeping Saddam from getting weapons of mass destruction was a valid reason to destroy his regime. That he did not have any in firing condition on the eve of our invasion is a reason for gratitude and not a reason to shriek that we lied to go to war against a non-existent threat.

The anti-war Left continues to misrepresent the WMD situation we found in Iraq. Lying. Dying. For crying out loud.

I truly get tired or arguing the same point over and over. But for the Left, no argument is ever over until they win. Then it is shut, old news, and never ripe for bringing up again. But until they win, they will come back again and again with the same discredited arguments.

So this article going over the whole WMD evidence from prior to the war is useful to read:

American intelligence and other foreign governments concluded at the time that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Senior Clinton administration officials stated that the regime possessed stockpiles. Saddam has "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country," declared former Vice President Al Gore on September 23, 2002. And even a month after the invasion Defense Secretary William Cohen believed we would find weapons: "I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find them."

On top of this were the findings contained in detailed U.N. reports. For example, on March 6, 2003, the United Nations issued a report on Iraq's "Unresolved Disarmament Issues." It stated that the "long list" of "unaccounted for" WMD-related material catalogued in December of 1998--the month inspections ended in Iraq--and beyond were still "unaccounted for." The list included: up to 3.9 tons of VX nerve agent (though inspectors believed Iraq had enough VX precursors to produce 200 tons of the agent and suspected that VX had been "weaponized"); 6,526 aerial chemical bombs; 550 mustard gas shells; 2,062 tons of Mustard precursors; 15,000 chemical munitions; 8,445 liters of anthrax; growth media that could have produced "3,000 - 11,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 6,000 - 16,000 litres of anthrax, up to 5,600 litres of Clostridium perfringens, and a significant quantity of an unknown bacterial agent." Moreover, Iraq was obligated to account for this material by providing "verifiable evidence" that it had, in fact, destroyed its proscribed materials.

I do not believe that the last two administrations, every intelligence agency in the world, and indeed every opponent of the Iraq War were wrong about the basic premise that Saddam did have some chemical weapons (remember they said we could deter Iraq from using WMD or argued that conquering Iraq would risk terrorists getting WMD in the chaos of war) and the means to pursue chemicals, bio weapons, and nukes given enough time to escape the weakening international sanctions that the French and Russians especially were hammering on.

I think we will find the weapons or the evidence of who erased them given enough time.

And I still want to know why the lack of WMD matters to the anti-war side when their assumption that Saddam had them didn't lead them to support war before March 2003.